How to make cactus grow faster in Minecraft

Farming in Minecraft is one of the most popular activities as it is needed to have a steady supply of food and other crucial items for crafting. While you might have a massive farm for wheat, potatoes, and even carrots, sometimes you may need the requirement of cactuses. Planting cactuses is fine, but you need to wait for quite some time before the plant grows completely. So how can you make them grow faster?

There are some great methods that you can use to change the mechanics of Minecraft for the better. You can use game rules to tweak the mechanics of the blocky world. This article is about solving that specific waiting game; speeding up cactus growth. Here’s everything you need to know about it, and why you should consider doing it.

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The issue with cactus farming in Minecraft

The easiest way is by using commands to speed up Minecraft time (Image via Mojang Studios)

The biggest problem in the world of Minecraft for farmers is the limitation of vanilla growth mechanics and it is such a shame because just by allowing bone meal usage, this issue can be drastically reduced. While we wait for Mojang Studios to finally let us fertilize cacti like we do with wheat or carrots, talented players have found ways to work around it.

Unlike other crops, cactus growth relies entirely on "random ticks." It doesn't care about light levels (though it can't have a block directly above it), and it doesn't need water to grow. This makes it painfully slow if you are just watching a single block.

If you want to speed this process up instantly and don't mind altering the laws of the universe, there is a built-in command. By typing /gamerule randomTickSpeed [number] in the chat, you can drastically increase how fast plants grow. Do note that using commands will disable all achievements.

The default speed is 3 (for Java Edition) or 1 (for Bedrock). If you set this to 100 or higher, your cactus will shoot up in seconds. It is certainly the command you would want if you want instant results, but be careful as it speeds up everything else too, including fire spread and tree decay.

Fortunately, changing the game speed is a straightforward process and it is certainly worth the effort to bring some life to your farm. You don't need to be a technical wizard to get this working; just a few simple steps will drastically change your experience.

First, ensure you have cheats enabled in your world settings. Once you have that ready, launch Minecraft and open the chat window. Type /gamerule randomTickSpeed 200 and hit enter. You will immediately see the difference. To revert it, simply type the command again with the default value (3 for Java, 1 for Bedrock).

The game might take a moment to catch up if you set the number too high, but once it stabilizes, your blocky world will be overflowing with green dye and XP, making your next crafting project much more efficient.

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For Survival method (without commands)

Making a massive cactus farm in Minecraft is a Survival-friendly method to get more cactus is lesser time (Image via Mojang Studios)

Since you cannot force a single cactus to grow faster in vanilla survival without cheats, the "speed" comes from volume. The most popular method is the "0-tick farm" (though many of these were patched in recent updates like 1.16) or, more reliably, the high-density automatic farm.

This setup uses the unique mechanic where a cactus breaks instantly if a block is placed next to it. By placing a fence post or iron bar next to the space where the cactus will grow, it breaks the item immediately as it spawns.

What’s even more interesting is that you can stack these farms vertically. A tower of 50 cacti growing at normal speed produces the same "speed" of output as one cactus growing 50 times faster.

So to make up for the slow speed, you increase the volume of cactuses produced. If you want to keep everything survival-friendly and get achievements, then the farm-making method to choose. It will take some effort and planning, but the results are worth it.

Edited by Pranay Mishra